Few Words- Dystopian story
by samLawrence
Summary: A story following the first person narration of a 'nonspeaker', that is, a person who has lost his right to speak due to new government legislations banning speech and solitary living for the working class, claiming this is due to 'decreasing air quality'. He questions this, and slowly tries to find real answers as to why most of the population's lives have been ruined.


**Few Words**

_"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."_

The ashen room was hostile to say the least. A solid door formed the only inconsistency in the otherwise perfect room. A large speaker was placed in front of me, not half a metre away from my face. It had been sitting there for the past day in utter complacency, as I sat in the unnaturally angular steel chair, clearly not designed to suit the human posture.

It was so silent except for the air dispensation unit, which hummed on carelessly, whilst being my lifeline. The speaker still sat quietly, bearing down upon me, but not getting any closer. Everything felt so dead I felt my own humanity seeping away. I guess that was the point of these cells. Make people lose their minds: they make you feel less guilty when you end their lives when they're off their heads. Just kidding they didn't care either way.

I knew if I stirred the speaker would come to life, so I made sure I collected my thoughts before I did. I'd have to explain myself in about 60 words, and if I did a good job, I'd be able to leave The Cell and enter society. At least there the bars are abstract.

And so I stirred, and the speaker started, "Inmate twelve. Committed moderate level speech; witness reports fifty to a hundred words spoken of the mouth. True or False."

"True", I muttered. It was always safer to appease the machines. It was a shame they took it for granted.

After an uninspiring conversation and a phenomenally impassioned computerized speech on why the state had put restrictions on speech, I was free to leave. The speech at the end really got me, poor computers had to replace their lack of emotion with long words that kinda intimidated you and made you consider what a fancy robot it was. It was therefore, of course, inherently a wonderful thing.

After quickly accounting for the expansion of my vocabulary, I started off down the street. This was a non-speaker street. That meant no one spoke because everyone around here was too poor to buy his or her own speaker. When you went to the speaker streets, the air was thick with those funny computerized voices, as people plodded along with those sleek looking things attached to their heads and running down under their collar. They basically transmitted your thoughts onto a small portable speaker. I sometimes went down to the speaker neighborhoods cause you always had those people who had just bought their own speaker and were all keen to show their affluence and so briskly went for a walk with their speaker attached. They were too reckless to practice its proper usage. Each and every one of their thoughts blared out. It took a while to master separating your thought thoughts from your speech thoughts. Not that anyone was listening apart from me. But damn me it was funny.

People used to intimidate me out of the speaker neighborhoods. I guess, since it was illegal for me to actually materialize my thoughts, it bothered them that I sat there looking really quite happy with myself, for a nonspeaker. Nonspeakers were sometimes called bowers too: Their necks perpetually perpendicular to their shoulders, their backs forming arch bridges, as their thoughts were uselessly channeled into the ground.

But those were the early days of our new era, and now days no one pays attention to anything anymore. So I sit there, happily ignored. I didn't last long as there weren't any speaker virgins today, and I was getting a terrible headache from all the useless sound.

You'd think they'd plant more trees. My schooling hadn't lasted long as the speech legislation had turned all schools into speaker schools, but I remember trees were good for air. I don't know how, or why, but trees were good, but confoundingly, too quiet to be of any use.

I was back in nonspeaker area now. People trudged around like soldiers on the retreat, off to their factory or courier jobs, making and delivering nice things to our strident superiors. We didn't have any other way about it.

We were uprooted in the first days after the Legislation: a social blitzkrieg, if you will. Compared to my understanding of trees, I was fascinated by history. I always received a book about it on my birthday.

Anyway yes, the day the working class became the nonspeakers, everything was changed. We were crammed into a far smaller part of the city. Our houses were subdivided into tiny units. Two rooms for families of four or more, one room for everyone else. Communal kitchens and bathrooms were just outside. And that was that. Windows weren't allowed, so the security patrols could hear any 'illegal activities', which was talking of course. A few words or more and you were dragged right out of there I swear. They were always around. They didn't have speakers and that kinda pissed me off… It made them like us, in a way. Well not really. They come in pairs, and one of them spoke this one time. The other guy shot him right through the head, picked up his pistol, and continued as he was. We watched his buddy lay there in a rich crimson pool, seeping towards us. For me, it was his soulless body reaching out to us. In the morning, he was gone. As was the dark stain: that part of the road was briefly spotless, before the daily activities of the nonspeakers once again tarnished it til it was once again nothing but floor. I never forgot him though.

I felt a purposeful tap on my shoulder. I turned around and saw a guy I recognized. He was younger than me, and an absolute product of the Legislation days. Hadn't even dared to whisper me his name yet. He was the quintessential nonspeaker: every lawmakers dream. He ran around with an expired kind of dignity than you could almost call a stiff-necked working class pride, as he was doing now. He always gave me this look that was like "Don't bite the hand that's feeding you"... It's feeding me poison for god's sake.

After a brief look, he was off again, carrying some ridiculous package that was destroying his spine; Breaking him in.

I had been ambling around for a solid twenty minutes with some pretence of purpose, but then my aimlessness manifested itself. I sat on the side of the road, slightly bemused, when I was hit around the head, and vision left me, then consciousness.

I dreamt during that forced unconsciousness. I never usually dreamt when I voluntarily left the tangible world. I didn't like it at all. Sleep usually took away the one thing I had left in this world, my imagination. I used to be such a dreamer; I believed in everything until it was disproved. I believed in dragons, unicorns, and all the legends you could name. I used to think dreams and nightmares were as real as the here and now. But then I stopped believing in human kindness, and it only seemed appropriate to then cease me belief in all that mythical shit.

Back to my dream. Basically, I was in a forest. A huge forest, with a horizon of nothing but trees. Trees that ploughed into the sky, pierced the starry roof, and absorbed the mysteries of the universe.


End file.
